Thread: Privacy Alert! Big Brother is watching and listening, UPDATED

How The NSA Collects Your Internet Data In Four Charts

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/30/2013 03:37 -0400

• PrISM

When it blew the lid open on the NSA domestic spying scandal in conjunction with the Guardian, the Washington Post released the first batch of slides revealing the preliminary details of which Internet firms cooperate in secret with the NSA, unleashing a firestorm of lies and denials by these same private companies (not to mention the administration), whose collaboration with the US government was subsequently revealed to be of symbiotically and mutually beneficial (think massive government contracts and classified data kickbacks in exchange for confidential customer data).
Last night, WaPo released the latest batch of slides given to it by Edward Snowden who appears to have been very busy downloading as much internal NSA info as he could, during his three months at Booz. This time we learn all about the PRISM "tasking" process - or the detail of how the NSA goes about "incidentally" spying on America's citizens (because as much as it is a headline grabber, the NSA spying on the EU, the G-20, and other non-US entities, is after all its job).
From the WaPo:
Acquiring data from a new target
This slide describes what happens when an NSA analyst "tasks" the PRISM system for information about a new surveillance target. The request to add a new target is passed automatically to a supervisor who reviews the "selectors," or search terms. The supervisor must endorse the analyst's "reasonable belief," defined as 51 percent confidence, that the specified target is a foreign national who is overseas at the time of collection.


Analyzing information collected from private companies
After communications information is acquired, the data are processed and analyzed by specialized systems that handle voice, text, video and "digital network information" that includes the locations and unique device signatures of targets.


Each target is assigned a case notation
The PRISM case notation format reflects the availability, confirmed by The Post's reporting, of real-time surveillance as well as stored content.


Searching the PRISM database
On April 5, according to this slide, there were 117,675 active surveillance targets in PRISM's counterterrorism database. The slide does not show how many other Internet users, and among them how many Americans, have their communications collected "incidentally" during surveillance of those targets.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...ta-four-charts

NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program

Published: June 6, 2013, Updated June 29, 2013

The top-secret PRISM program allows the U.S. intelligence community to gain access from nine Internet companies to a wide range of digital information, including e-mails and stored data, on foreign targets operating outside the United States. The program is court-approved but does not require individual warrants. Instead, it operates under a broader authorization from federal judges who oversee the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Some documents describing the program were first released by The Washington Post on June 6. The newly released documents below give additional details about how the program operates, including the levels of review and supervisory control at the NSA and FBI. The documents also show how the program interacts with the Internet companies. These slides, annotated by The Post, represent a selection from the overall document, and certain portions are redacted. Read related article.

New slides published June 29

Acquiring data from a new target

This slide describes what happens when an NSA analyst "tasks" the PRISM system for information about a new surveillance target. The request to add a new target is passed automatically to a supervisor who reviews the "selectors," or search terms. The supervisor must endorse the analyst's "reasonable belief," defined as 51 percent confidence, that the specified target is a foreign national who is overseas at the time of collection.
The FBI uses government equipment on private company property to retrieve matching information from a participating company, such as Microsoft or Yahoo and pass it without further review to the NSA.

For stored communications, but not for live surveillance, the FBI consults its own databases to make sure the selectors do not match known Americans.

This is where data enters NSA systems, described more fully on the next slide.The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court does not review any individual collection request.








Analyzing information collected from private companies

After communications information is acquired, the data are processed and analyzed by specialized systems that handle voice, text, video and "digital network information" that includes the locations and unique device signatures of targets.
From the FBI's interception unit on the premises of private companies, the information is passed to one or more "customers" at the NSA, CIA or FBI.

PRINTAURA automates the traffic flow. SCISSORS and Protocol Exploitation sort data types for analysis in NUCLEON (voice), PINWALE (video), MAINWAY (call records) and MARINA (Internet records).

The systems identified as FALLOUT and CONVEYANCE appear to be a final layer of filtering to reduce the intake of information about Americans.



Each target is assigned a case notation

The PRISM case notation format reflects the availability, confirmed by The Post's reporting, of real-time surveillance as well as stored content.
Depending on the provider, the NSA may receive live notifications when a target logs on or sends an e-mail, or may monitor a voice, text or voice chat as it happens (noted on the first slide as "Surveillance").



Searching the PRISM database

On April 5, according to this slide, there were 117,675 active surveillance targets in PRISM's counterterrorism database. The slide does not show how many other Internet users, and among them how many Americans, have their communications collected "incidentally" during surveillance of those targets.


Original slides published June 6
Introducing the program

A slide briefing analysts at the National Security Agency about the program touts its effectiveness and features the logos of the companies involved.
The program is called PRISM, after the prisms used to split light, which is used to carry information on fiber-optic cables.

This note indicates that the program is the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports.

The seal of
Special Source Operations, the NSA term for alliances with trusted U.S. companies.



Monitoring a target's communication

This diagram shows how the bulk of the world’s electronic communications move through companies based in the United States.


Providers and data

The PRISM program collects a wide range of data from the nine companies, although the details vary by provider.


Participating providers

This slide shows when each company joined the program, with Microsoft being the first, on Sept. 11, 2007, and Apple the most recent, in October 2012.




866 Comments
Comment




Sort:



David Johnson
8:13 PM MST

The equipment doesn't have to be located physically at say for MIcrosoft at any of their data centers.. a Tap at any of the internet exchange points would be sufficient http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Internet_exchange_points_in_t...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-collect...

http://www.alipac.us/f19/fbi-sued-ov...9/#post1353445

Michael Savage Defends NSA Whistleblower, Edward Snowden, Hero and True Patriot, Full Show - 6/10/13


Published on Jun 10, 2013

Radio Commentary by Michael Savage Aired on June 10, 2013 --- Michael Savage Website: http://www.michaelsavage.com

• Category
  
  News & Politics
  
• License
  
  Standard YouTube License
  

McCain: Russia Wants New Cold War Over Snowden

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
July 1, 2013

Republicans and Democrats are outraged that Russia has not immediately turned Edward Snowden over to the United States to face charges of espionage and treason.

Arizona Senator John McCain and New York Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer on Sunday accused Russian President Putin of using the NSA whistleblower as an excuse to attack the United States. McCain went so far as to insinuate that Putin is trying to rekindle the Cold War.



“I think we pushed the reset back down to about 1955. And so we have to deal realistically with an autocratic ruler of Russia who continues to repress people,” McCain told Fox News on Sunday.

“They thumb our nose at us no matter what the issue is, and we should deal realistically, not a return of the Cold War, but realistically with Vladimir Putin,” he added.

“They should pay a price, either diplomatic, economic, geopolitical, for doing what they did. They’re always putting their finger in our eye,” said Schumer. He said the United States should impose sanctions on Ecuador, although Snowden has yet to take refuge in the South American country.

Rand Paul, the Senator from Kentucky, is one of a small number of people in government defending the former Booz Allen Hamilton analyst.

“They’re going to contrast the behavior of James Clapper, our national intelligence director, with Edward Snowden,” said Paul. “Mr. Clapper lied in Congress in defiance of the law in the name of security. Mr. Snowden told the truth in the name of privacy.”

“Everybody is worried about him and what they’re going to do and how they will convict him of treason and how they’re going to kill him, but what about the people who destroy our Constitution?”Ron Paul said last month. “What kind of penalty are those individuals who take the Second or the Fourth amendment and destroy it? What do we think about people who assassinate American citizens without trials and assume that’s the law of the land? That’s where our problem is.”

“I’m worried about somebody in our government who might kill him, with a cruise missile or a drone missile,” the elder Paul said.

Vice president Joe Biden intervened directly in the case when he called Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa to urge him to turn down Snowden’s asylum request. Correa told Biden Ecuador will not consider the asylum request until Snowden is on Ecuadorean soil.

Snowden is allegedly holed up at Moscow’s international airport.

“The moment that he arrives, if he arrives, the first thing is we’ll ask the opinion of the United States, as we did in the Assange case with England,” Correa said. “But the decision is ours to make.”

In August, 2012, Ecuador gave asylum to Wikileaks founder and activist Julian Assange. Ricardo Patiño, the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister, said he was concerned Assange might be extradited to the United States and face execution or indefinite detainment.

Assange has taken refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy. Britain’s Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said that if he leaves the embassy he will be arrested.

Republican Sarah Palin has called for Assange to be “hunted down” while Mike Huckabee has called for his assassination. “Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty,” said the former presidential candidate.

Related Articles

• ‘No stopping’ more Snowden revelations – Assange
• Ecuador still “considering” Snowden asylum request
• Snowden asked to brief Russian parliament on US espionage
• NSA leaker Snowden’s plane to Cuba will pass through US airspace – source
• NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden Goes Missing

This article was posted: Monday, July 1, 2013 at 9:41 am
Tags: domestic news, domestic spying, foreign affairs


http://www.infowars.com/mccain-russi...-over-snowden/

TECHNOLOGY

WONDERING WHAT HARMLESS ‘METADATA’ LIKE THE NSA COMPILES CAN ACTUALLY REVEAL? GERMAN POLITICIAN SHOWS YOU

Jul. 1, 2013 10:39am Liz Klimas

The term “metadata” has been tossed around lately, especially after the leak about the NSA’s classified programs last month. It’s a collection of allegedly harmless — and nothing too specific — data from phone and Internet companies. But what if that’s not quite true?

Prior to leak about the NSA, TheBlaze detailed just what this information could show about an individual when the government investigating phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors was a hot button issue. But now a German politician has taken it a step further, using six months of his own metadata to give a visual of what this information really depicts.

Malte Spitz, a member of Germany’s Green party, sued the telecommunication company Deutsche Telekom to give up 35,830 records of his data from 2009 into 2010. Zeit Online then compiled these six months of Spitz’s life on a map showing how many incoming and outgoing calls and text messages were had and how long he used the Internet.

Here are a couple screenshots of the activity, but be sure to take a look at Zeit Online for more of this interactive metadata graphic (Note: be sure to try out hitting “play” on Zeit’s website to see how Spitz traveled too):

(Image: Zeit Online)

(Image: Zeit Online)

(Image: Zeit Online)

(Image: Zeit Online)

(Image: Zeit Online)

“We combined this geolocation data with information relating to his life as a politician, such as Twitter feeds, blog entries and websites, all of which is all freely available on the internet,” Zeit Online wrote. And when all this is taken together, it reveals a lot.

Spitz explained as much in an op-ed in the New York Times Sunday about it titled “Germans Loved Obama. Now We Don’t Trust Him.”

Spitz explained to readers that six months of his data was retained per a 2006 European Union directive, which was met with “huge opposition” and later found unconstitutional in the country.
“In Germany, whenever the government begins to infringe on individual freedom, society stands up. Given our history, we Germans are not willing to trade in our liberty for potentially better security. Germans have experienced firsthand what happens when the government knows too much about someone,” Spitz wrote.

“Three weeks ago, when the news broke about the National Security Agency’s collection of metadata in the United States, I knew exactly what it meant. My records revealed the movements of a single individual; now imagine if you had access to millions of similar data sets. You could easily draw maps, tracing communication and movement. You could see which individuals, families or groups were communicating with one another. You could identify any social group and determine its major actors,” he continued later in his op-ed. [Emphasis added]

With this latest news of the NSA’s data collection, Spitz wrote that U.S. President Barack Obama speaking outside the Brandenburg Gate on June 19 — just five days after The Guardian had broken its first NSA story based on information leaked to it from Edward Snowden — “looked a lot different from the one who spoke in front of the Siegessäule in July 2008.”

“During Mr. Obama’s presidency, no American political debate has received as much attention in Germany as the N.S.A. Prism program. People are beginning to second-guess the belief that digital communication stays private. It changes both our perception of communication and our trust in Mr. Obama,” Spitz wrote.

Spitz went on to describe the shift Germans have had from solidarity with the U.S. after 9/11 to one that through the Bush administration and into the Obama administration has led to questioning “whether Americans actually share our understanding of the right balance between liberty and security.”

“When courts and judges negotiate secretly, when direct data transfers occur without limits, when huge data storage rather than targeted pursuit of individuals becomes the norm, all sense of proportionality and accountability is lost,” he said.

As of right now, Spitz said the “trust and credibility” Obama once had in Germany has now been undermined.

Spitz ends his op-ed suggesting Obama should have included in his speech not James Madison’s quote that “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare,” but Benjamin Franklin saying “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

(H/T: Reddit)
–
Related Contributions:

• What Happens to Leakers in Ecuador?

–
Other Must Read Stories:

• Here's Everything We Know About the Man Behind the NSA Spying Leak
  
• 5 Ways to Thwart the NSA and Gov't from Spying on You
  
• 'Pirate Party' Gaining Traction in German Politics
  
• Why the NSA Collecting Your Phone Records Is a Problem (op-ed)
  
• Five Good Things About the Verizon iPhone for Enterprises (zdnet.com)

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013...an-shows-you/#

Outraged Germany to Obama: STOP BUGGING US! Cold War Ended!

Monday, July 1, 2013 6:03

(Before It's News)

Image credit: SurveillanceIssues.com

Germany has joined France in angry response to Washington for the first time, saying it had been decided that the Cold War ended and that friends should not be bugging each other if the U.S. is to be trusted in an EU trade agreement.
‘Sense of Naked Outrage’ at US Administration across EU
The EU-US trade talks scheduled to open in Washington next week “could become an early casualty of the burgeoning transatlantic espionage dispute,” The Guardian reports.
We cannot accept this kind of behaviour between partners and allies,” France’s President Francois Hollande had said. “We ask that this stop immediately.”
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and President François Hollande described the massive US spying and snooping in Europe as “unacceptable.”
Germans are suggesting that there must be mutual trust if trade talks will proceed.
”We are no longer in the cold war,” her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said. “If it is confirmed that diplomatic representations of the European Union and individual European countries have been spied upon, we will clearly say that bugging friends is unacceptable.”
“Mutual trust is necessary in order to come to [a trade] agreement.”
The Guardian says, “A sense of naked outrage gathered momentum across Europe at the reports that US agencies were bugging and tapping EU offices in Washington and New York, as well as the embassies of several EU member states.”
“Washington is shooting itself in the foot,” Germany’s conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported. “Declaring the EU offices to be a legitimate attack target is more than the unfriendly act of a machine that knows no bounds and may be out of the control of politics and the courts.”
Meanwhile, Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro, who renewed offering asylum to “humanitarian” and “brave youth” American whistleblower Edward Snowden, is to land in Russia today where he could help get the persecuted human rights defender out and into safer haven.


http://beforeitsnews.com/obama/2013/...d-2453226.html

Breaking: Edward Snowden Releases Statement – Blasts Obama

Posted by Jim Hoft on Monday, July 1, 2013, 8:13 PM

Edward Snowden released a statement via Wikileaks today.
Wikileaks reported:

One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.
On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic “wheeling and dealing” over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.

For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum.

Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.


In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.


I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.


Edward Joseph Snowden

Spy-crazed US gov't spies on self



The US government is even spying on itself, through a program called the Insider Threat Program. Obama instituted it right after Bradley Manning's leaks came out. It is designed to force federal workers of every agency to rat out their coworkers if they think they are acting like they might want to leak something or talk to anyone about their jobs.

http://patriotaction.net/video/video...sg_share_video

Beyond Snowden: US General Cartwright has been indicted for espionage

Tuesday, 02 July 2013 09:42
Posted by David Icke

'While the world focuses on Washington’s pursuit of NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden, another much more high ranking member of the US power structure has been indicted for espionage this week…'

Read more: Beyond Snowden: US General Cartwright has been indicted for espionage

http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/8...-for-espionage