The Oliver-Snowden interview is uncomfortable to watch, and good journalism.
Is the Newest U.S Cybersecurity Agency Necessary?
The US has created another cybersecurity agency to deal with incoming threats. Is it really necessary?
Edward Snowden Documentary ‘CitizenFour’ Nabs Oscar Doc
Documentary profiling NSA whistleblower grabs an Oscar, with Snowden calling it a “brave and brilliant” film.
Security Researcher Claims iOS Devices Have a Backdoor
A security researcher is claiming to have found a set of services in iOS that appear to be a firmware-level backdoor in iOS devices. What’s more interesting is that Apple has, in a very non-Apple manner, responded to his claims by posting a support page about it. He claims that these are confirmations of the backdoors that he found in iOS and that Apple claims to use them for diagnostic and enterprise purposes. These backdoors can only be accessed by Apple (or anyone that has access to Apple’s services) so they’re mostly secure backdoors, but they are backdoors nonetheless. Most consumers are completely and wholly
Which Americans The NSA Spies On
The Intercept is reporting that the NSA is unsurprisingly spying on countless American citizens without there being any reasonable justification for doing so. This is being reported based on the documents that Edward Snowden gave Glenn Greenwald including a “FISA recap” spreadsheet that details thousands of email addresses being monitored. Out of those email accounts being monitored, 202 addresses were marked as US persons, while 1,782 were marked as non-US persons and 5,501 were marked as unknown or simply left blank. The Intercept identified five Americans on the list from their email addresses and helped build the story that we’re reporting on today. The NSA is
The NSA Gathers 90% Irrelevant Data
The Washington Post is reporting via documents obtained from Edward Snowden that the NSA is collection hundreds of thousands of records, upwards of 160,000 communications, most of which are completely irrelevant to the target person or people. After spending four months analyzing the data which included 22,000 reports and 160,000 data intercepts, the Washington Post was able to discern that a whopping 89% of the total data collected was from non-targets or mere bystanders. The records obtained by Edward Snowden and passed on to the Washington post spanned 4 years of records that started in 2009 and ended in 2012. Obviously, they are merely a
NSA Can Spy on Any Country Not in the "Five Eyes"
According to documents obtained by the Washington Post, the US court that oversees the FISA-based activities, also known as the FISA Court, has given the NSA the ability to effectively spy on any country that isn’t part of the Five Eyes alliance. The countries included in the Five Eyes alliance are all English-speaking powers that are England or former English colonies. These include, The UK (who has GCHQ), Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The US is also part of the Five Eyes alliance, which is the fifth member of this English-speaking alliance. And due to agreements signed by these five countries, they have all agreed
German Government Ditches Verizon Amid NSA Fears
The German government has announced that they will be switching away from Verizon for internet services as an ISP for the German government. They noted that the reasons for this decision had to do with increased demands on the network and the prevalence of the NSA in Verizon’s business. Based on the translation that was available, it appears as though the German government is merely using this as an opportunity to switch internet services to a company that is German. Sure, the likelihood that their networks will get snooped on by the NSA will probably go down, or at least become more difficult. However, usually,
The NSA Claims They Have No Control Over Their Systems
As a result of the Snowden revelations regarding the NSA’s spying on basically the whole world, some privacy advocates have filed lawsuits against the NSA in US courts. Naturally, this results in the NSA having to gather evidence by subpoena to prove their side of the story. This is especially true when you consider that James Clapper, the Director of the NSA, lied to Congress about exactly what the NSA was and wasn’t doing. Yet, somehow the guy is still in power and has not faced any repercussions for his lies. As such, there are multiple lawsuits claiming that the NSA has overstepped the boundaries of
Glenn Greenwald Will Publish List of Americans Spied on by NSA
As we come closer and closer to Edward Snowden’s interview tonight with none other than Brian Williams of NBC, Glenn Greenwald has said (while promoting his new book) that he will be publishing a list of Americans (likely high profile individuals) that are being spied upon by the NSA. This list of NSA targets that are American citizens (something the NSA cannot really do without specific permission) will likely open up exactly who the NSA is spying on in terms of people inside the US. We will discover what kinds of groups they’re targeting and where those people come from as well, and it will
The NSA is Recording all Calls in Afghanistan, Says Wikileaks
According to the latest release by Wikileaks, the NSA is recording all calls coming in and out of Afghanistan. They reported this even though other publications and journalists strictly opposed to releasing the name of Afghanistan in their disclosures that the NSA was recording all calls in the Bahamas. Under a week ago, The Intercept (Glenn Greenwald and co.) along with Wikileaks and a few other publications had disclosed that all cellular calls were being recorded by the NSA and that there was another country that had yet to be named that was getting a similar treatment. However, The Intercept refused to publish the name of the
USA Freedom Act Passes House, Snowden Vindicated
So, remember when the US Government was painting Edward Snowden out as an evil guy and someone that was harming our country? Well, today’s vote of the United States House of Representatives appears to suggest otherwise. Sure, the USA Freedom Act that was passed by the House today was a gutted and signifcantly weaker version of the bill that the EFF had originally backed, but now at least we can agree that Snowden’s disclosures were without a doubt pivotal in passing this legislation. Sure, it still needs to go to the US Senate and be passed there and then passed by Obama himself, but judging
80 Tech Companies Cooperating with NSA, Claims Wikileaks
Since we’ve had quite a bit of time between Snowden disclosures of NSA activities, it appears as though Wikileaks has gotten ahold of some secret NSA documents that name names as to whom has been cooperating with them. They claim that they have over 80 different companies in their strategic partnerships. The Wikileaks obtained slide states that these 80 “Major Global Corporations” are supporting BOTH missions. However, the document doesn’t specify exactly what both of those missions are, exactly. However, since this slide is labelled as COMINT that means it specifically pertains to communications between people, which may narrow exactly what those missions might be.
NSA Bugged Foreign-Bound Networking Equipment
According to Glenn Greenwald, who seemingly quotes himself in his own titles, the NSA has routinely been intercepting US-based networking hardware bound for countries abroad. While Glenn Greenwald doesn’t specifically implicate any networking companies, it would be safe to assume that companies like Cisco, Juniper, Brocade, Dell, HP and many more. This is in the face of the fact that the US government had been criticizing the use of Huawei networking hardware due to the beliefs that the Chinese would be presenting a security risk to the US. They essentially claimed that Huawei was bugging their networking equipment for the Chinese government and that their
Google's Relationship with the NSA Closer Than Believed
Google has consistently tried to make themselves look like they are forced to cooperate with the NSA and that they aren’t participating in the NSA’s programs to monitor the general population, but Al Jazeera America has obtained documents via the Freedom of Information Act that show a fairly close level of cooperation between Google and the NSA. Sure, the documents obtained by Al Jazeera don’t show any sort of cooperating ‘smoking gun’ but they do show that the NSA does work fairly closely with Google on National Security measures that might affect the security of Google and ultimately the security of the USA. In the
The Whitehouse Says They Have Right to Withhold a Security Vulnerability
On Monday, as a follow up to the awareness around the Heartbleed bug and all of the rumors that circulated around it, The Whitehouse posted a blog clarifying their stance on how they approach vulnerabilities such as Heartbleed. In fact, the NSA categorically denied any knowledge of the Heartbleed bug officially on Twitter, even though they have been known to lie to Congress and the American people without hesitation, so their honesty is a little more than at question. So, what exactly are they going to disclose and when? Well, there’s a nifty little check list that the Whitehouse has provided us with so that
The Guardian and Washington Post Win Pulitzer Prize for NSA Coverage
The Guardian and Washington Post have both won a shared Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the Edward Snowden leak that ultimately led to the world discovering the breadth of the NSA’s surveillance programs. Their initial coverage, which we covered, we have followed and covered numerous NSA-related revelations that have come out of both the Washington Post and The Guardian, even though, I would have liked to see Der Spiegel included in the recognition of publications that have served the public beneficially by researching and publicly denouncing the NSA’s actions. For their part, there is no denying that the Washington Post and The Guardian have
The NSA Exploited the OpenSSL Heartbleed Bug for 2 Years
According to a report coming out of Bloomberg, the NSA supposedly knew of the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug for nearly 2 years and used it to their advantage when they needed to. This makes the entire belief that the bug was an accidental mistake in the code that hadn’t been noticed much less probable. Not to mention the fact that the heartbleed bug is effecting almost the entire internet and puts the security of most passwords into question. The problem, however, is that not enough websites have fixed their certificates to patch this issue. There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of affected sites that
