Thread: Meet PRISM / US-984XN - The US Government's Internet Espionage Super Operation

Meet PRISM / US-984XN - The US Government's Internet Espionage Super Operation


Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/06/2013 19:31 -0400

The disclosures involving this (and the prior) administration's Big Brother surveillance state, which would make Nixon blush with envy are now coming fast and furious (one wonders - why now: even that bastion of liberalism the NY Times, has turned against Obama). Although while the Guardian's overnight news that Verizon (and most certainly AT&T as well among others) was cooperating with the NSA on spying on US citizens, so far at least the internet seemed, if only to the great unwashed masses, immune. That is no longer the case following news from the WaPo exposing PRISM, a highly classified program, which has not been disclosed publicly before. "Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy." What PRISM does is to allow the NSA and the FBI to tap directly "into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time."
The secrecy is so deep we expect even the president himself may not know about it (but he does):

The highly classified program, code-named PRISM, has not been disclosed publicly before. Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy. Even late last year, when critics of the foreign intelligence statute argued for changes, the only members of Congress who know about PRISM were bound by oaths of office to hold their tongues.

Of course, PRISM is from the government, and it is here to help you. But the question is why are some of the biggest private companies explicitly collaborating with what is now the biggest exposed spying operation in history, companies which include such household names as Microsoft Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. Yes, everyone's beloved Apple was added in October 2012: the NSA knows all about your music playlist, not to mention has a database of all your iMessages.

In other words, all those newly minted people known as corporations are in on it, but not: dear debt serf. It's a small club, and there is a multimillion liquid net-worth cutoff... and you are not in it. From WaPo:

An internal presentation on the Silicon Valley operation, intended for senior analysts in the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, described the new tool as the most prolific contributor to the President’s Daily Brief, which cited PRISM data in 1,477 articles last year. According to the briefing slides, obtained by The Washington Post, “NSA reporting increasingly relies on PRISM” as its leading source of raw material, accounting for nearly 1 in 7 intelligence reports.

That is a remarkable figure in an agency that measures annual intake in the trillions of communications. It is all the more striking because the NSA, whose lawful mission is foreign intelligence, is reaching deep inside the machinery of American companies that host hundreds of millions of American-held accounts on American soil.

The technology companies, which participate knowingly in PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” PalTalk, although much smaller, has hosted significant traffic during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war.

...

the PRISM program appears more nearly to resemble the most controversial of the warrantless surveillance orders issued by President George W. Bush after the al-Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Its history, in which President Obama presided over “exponential growth” in a program that candidate Obama criticized, shows how fundamentally surveillance law and practice have shifted away from individual suspicion in favor of systematic, mass collection techniques.

Spying on US citizens is "incidental"... kinda like killing thousands of women and children in drone raids is "collateral damage":

Even when the system works just as advertised, with no American singled out for targeting, the NSA routinely collects a great deal of American content. That is described as “incidental,” and it is inherent in contact chaining, one of the basic tools of the trade. To collect on a suspected spy or foreign terrorist means, at minimum, that everyone in the suspect’s inbox or outbox is swept in. Intelligence analysts are typically taught to chain through contacts two “hops” out from their target, which increases “incidental collection” exponentially. The same math explains the aphorism, from the John Guare play, that no one is more than “six degrees of separation” from any other person.

This is how the big corporations sleep at night:

Formally, in exchange for immunity from lawsuits, companies like Yahoo and AOL are obliged to accept a “directive” from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence to open their servers to the FBI’s Data Intercept Technology Unit, which handles liaison to U.S. companies from the NSA. In 2008, Congress gave the Justice Department authority to for a secret order from the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court to compel a reluctant company “to comply.”
In practice, there is room for a company to maneuver, delay or resist. When a clandestine intelligence program meets a highly regulated industry, said a lawyer with experience in bridging the gaps, neither side wants to risk a public fight. The engineering problems are so immense, in systems of such complexity and frequent change, that the FBI and NSA would be hard pressed to build in back doors without active help from each company.

Some "do lots of evil" by their customers. They just don't disclose it:

“Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data,” a company spokesman said. “We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a ‘back door’ for the government to access private user data.”

Time to kill that Facebook profile... or be accidentally killed for being "of a terroristy persuasion" based on some NSA algo:

There has been “continued exponential growth in tasking to Facebook and Skype,” according to the 41 PRISM slides. With a few clicks and an affirmation that the subject is believed to be engaged in terrorism, espionage or nuclear proliferation, an analyst obtains full access to Facebook’s “extensive search and surveillance capabilities against the variety of online social networking services.”

And some more charts:
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.

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.

In retrospect, it is sad what a farce this country has become: artificial market, centrally-planned economy, pervasive spying on the people, a tax collector that target political enemies, an administration that openly lies under oath...
If we didn't know better we would say this was 1955 Stalingrad, although Stalingrad at the height of totalitarianism was for amateurs. This is next level shit: "Firsthand experience with these systems, and horror at their capabilities, is what drove a career intelligence officer to provide PowerPoint slides about PRISM and supporting materials to The Washington Post in order to expose what he believes to be a gross intrusion on privacy. “They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type,” the officer said."

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...uper-operation

The NSA, AT&T And The Secrets Of Room 641A

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/06/2013 11:27 -0400

• national security
• Reality
• SPY
• Verizon
• White House

Our final observation on the matter of the US government, no longer accountable to anyone, and treating its citizens as indentured debt serfs who are entitled to precisely zero privacy rights, comes from Stephen Wolfson and "The NSA, AT&T And The Secrets Of Room 641A."
It is an impartial view of what is really going on in the world of communication surveillance. The reality is that while the NSA, which is a public entity through and through, is allowed and expected to do whatever its superiors tell it (i.e., the White House), how does one justify the complete betrayal of their customers by private corporations such as Verizon and AT&T? This may be the most insidious and toxic symbiosis between the public and private sector in the recent past. Because if private telecom corporations are willing to bend all the rules when it comes to the US government, just what do all the other companies operating in the US have to do to appease first the Bush and now the Obama administrations?
From the paper:


This note discusses the possible existence of a domestic surveillance/data collection program conducted by the National Security Agency (“NSA”) with the assistance of AT&T, and the implications of such a program under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA”). This article first examines a May 11, 2006 USA Today article reporting that the NSA was given access to a huge number of call records from AT&T. Next, it turns to the story of former AT&T technician Mark Klein and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (“EFF”) case, Hepting v. AT&T Corporation. Klein claims that the NSA has built a “secret room” in AT&T’s San Francisco switching center that grants the agency access to a vast amount of customer information. In Hepting, the EFF alleges that AT&T violated the Stored Communications Act, Title II of the ECPA; the Wiretap Act, Title I of the ECPA; and the Pen Register Statute, Title III of the ECPA. Finally, this article addresses the Protect America Act of 2007 and provides analysis of expert opinions in the field.
Room 641A:

Room 641A is located in the SBC Communications building at 611 Folsom Street, San Francisco, three floors of which were occupied by AT&T before SBC purchased AT&T. The room was referred to in internal AT&T documents as the SG3 [Study Group 3] Secure Room. It is fed by fiber optic lines from beam splitters installed in fiber optic trunks carrying Internet backbone traffic and, as analyzed by J. Scott Marcus, a former CTO for GTE and a former adviser to the FCC, has access to all Internet traffic that passes through the building, and therefore "the capability to enable surveillance and analysis of internet content on a massive scale, including both overseas and purely domestic traffic." Former director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group, William Binney, has estimated that 10 to 20 such facilities have been installed throughout the nation.

The room measures about 24 by 48 feet (7.3 by 15 m) and contains several racks of equipment, including a Narus STA 6400, a device designed to intercept and analyze Internet communications at very high speeds.

The very existence of the room was revealed by a former AT&T technician, Mark Klein, and was the subject of a 2006 class action lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T.[5] Klein claims he was told that similar black rooms are operated at other facilities around the country.

Room 641A and the controversies surrounding it were subjects of an episode of Frontline, the current affairs documentary program on PBS. It was originally broadcast on May 15, 2007. It was also featured on PBS's NOW on March 14, 2008. The room was also covered in the PBS NOVA episode "The Spy Factory".

Much more can be read about Room 641A in Wired Magazine.
Full paper below (pdf link) http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...rets-room-641a

As A Reminder, AT&T, Verizon And Others Have Been Providing NSA With Phone Records Since 2001


Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/06/2013 10:31 -0400

• Department of Justice
• Verizon

When it comes to events from the recent "for the collective good" history, America appears to have a very short memory. Because if it could remember further back than just 15 (milli)seconds, it would recall this USA Today front page from May 11, 2006:


To summarize:

On May 11, 2006, USA Today published an article reporting that AT&T, Verizon, and Bellsouth had been providing the NSA with the telephone records of “tens of millions of Americans” since shortly after September 11, 2001. Called “the largest database ever assembled in the world” by the newspaper’s source, its purported goal was to “‘create a database of every call ever made’ within the nation’s borders.”

Back then everyone denied everything.

Although it was not implicated in the story, Qwest, a teleco that operates primarily in the West and Northwest, quickly stated that it had not participated in the NSA program. Shortly thereafter, both BellSouth and Verizon also denied involvement. BellSouth demanded that USA Today state for the record that it had not been involved with the NSA. Eventually, on June 30, 2006, USA Today withdrew the story as it applied to Verizon and BellSouth... Unlike BellSouth and Verizon, AT&T neither confirmed nor denied assisting the NSA, asserting that the U.S. Department of Justice said discussing the program would harm national security

Good - so we now know Verizon was lying and AT&T was and likely still continues to cooperate with the NSA. Any questions?
So - once again - what exactly is the news? That Americans are being spied upon? This has been the case for the past 12 years!
Oh, we know - it must is the "stunning" realization that the person who created the following morphed photo actually knew what they were doing.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-0...e-records-2001

Spy state shock: Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Skype, AOL, Apple all secretly sharing private user communications with NSA

Friday, 07 June 2013 10:04
Posted by David Icke

'In a week that has already been rocked by one explosive government spy scandal involving the NSA scooping up phone call data and geographic locations of Verizon customers, another scandalous discovery has just erupted that's sure to "wake up" millions of Americans who have been living in denial.

"The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time," reports the Washington Post in an explosive investigative article.'

Read more ...

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Two Secretive Israeli Companies May Have Bugged The US Telecommunications Grid For The NSA

'Two companies that bugged the U.S. telecommunications network for the National Security Agency (NSA) have extensive links to Israel's intelligence service, James Bamford of Wired reports.

NSA's chief General Keith Alexander was called before Congress last week to testify about the $2 billion Utah spy center the NSA is currently building, and he said that the NSA does not have the ability to spy on the confidential personal communications of Americans.

It seems that he wasn't lying since the NSA hired secretive contractors with extensive ties to Israel to provide hardware and software for 10 to 20 wiretapping rooms in key telecommunication points throughout the country, according to Wired.'

Read more ...


http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/8...tions-with-nsa

Greenwald: Obama 'bullying and threatening' anyone who covers PRISM

POLICY & ISSUES
JUNE 7, 2013
BY: JOE NEWBY

NSA Credits: Getty Images

On Thursday, Glenn Greenwald, the UK Guardian journalist who helped break two major stories on government surveillance, told CNN's Piers Morgan that the Obama administration has been "bullying and threatening" anyone "who thinks about exposing it or writing about it or even doing journalism" about the subject, Business Insider reported.

Worse yet, he says, the U.S. government is actively working to destroy privacy around the world.

"There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal," he said.

"And that is to destroy privacy and anonymity not just in the United States but around the world."

Greenwald wasn't finished, however.

"It's well past time that we have a debate about whether that's the kind of country and world in which we want to live," he added. "We haven't had that debate because it's all done in secrecy and the Obama administration has been very aggressive about bullying and threatening anybody who thinks about exposing it or writing about it or even doing journalism about it. It's well past time that that come to an end."

Late Wednesday, Greenwald reported that the NSA has been collecting phone data on millions of Verizon customers on a daily basis under a secret court order.

Later, the Washington Post reported that the NSA and the FBI have been engaged in a highly classified data collection program called "PRISM" that was established in 2007.

According to that report, the government has been working with nine companies -- Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.

According to a chart published at the Guardian, the data collected includes email, voice and video chat, photos, video, stored data, file transfers and details of online social media activity.

"In other words," Jeff Dunetz wrote at Yid with Lid, "your federal government now has the largest collection of internet porn (and personal information) in the entire world."

How bad is the situation?

"They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type," one whistleblower said.

"The NSA and FBI tap directly into the central servers of the companies, obtaining audio, video, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs that 'enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time,' according to the Post," Business Insider said.

The administration and some members of Congress have defended the programs, but Greenwald said it's time for pushback.

"People like Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss can have press conferences threatening people for bringing light to what it is they're doing, but the only people who are going to be investigated are them," he told Morgan.

"It's well past time that these threats start to be treated with the contempt that they deserve."
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For hard-hitting conservative commentary, please visit Joe's blog, the Conservative Firing Line. You can also find Joe's articles at Right News Now, Liberty Unyielding and PolitiCollision.


Suggested by the author:

• New York Times slammed for changing op-ed that says Obama has lost credibility
• Obama's NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers
• Lindsey Graham: I'm 'glad' NSA snooping on millions of Verizon customers
• After asking, Lindsey Graham learns lesson: First Amendment applies to bloggers
• Constitutional law professor: U.S. should abandon archaic and evil Constitution

http://www.examiner.com/article/gree...o-covers-prism

Paper: UK Government Getting US Spy Agency's Data

http://www.newsmax.com/newswidget/Br...n=widgetphase1

High-Level American Intelligence Source: “We Hack Everyone Everywhere"

Submitted by George Washington on 06/07/2013 16:59 -0400

• Barack Obama
• Fail
• national intelligence
• national security
• New York Times
• Obama Administration
• Too Big To Fail

Glenn Greenwald - who broke the stories on the phone and internet spying scandals this week - has a new expose ... this time on offensive cyber-warfare:

Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals.

***

An intelligence source with extensive knowledge of the National Security Agency’s systems told the Guardian … “We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world.”

***

The full classified directive repeatedly emphasizes that all cyber-operations must be conducted in accordance with US law and only as a complement to diplomatic and military options. But it also makes clear how both offensive and defensive cyber operations are central to US strategy.

Under the heading “Policy Reviews and Preparation”, a section marked “TS/NF” – top secret/no foreign – states: “The secretary of defense, the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], and the director of the CIA … shall prepare for approval by the president through the National Security Advisor a plan that identifies potential systems, processes and infrastructure against which the United States should establish and maintain OCEO capabilities…” The deadline for the plan is six months after the approval of the directive.

The directive provides that any cyber-operations “intended or likely to produce cyber effects within the United States” require the approval of the president, except in the case of an “emergency cyber action”. When such an emergency arises, several departments, including the department of defense, are authorized to conduct such domestic operations without presidential approval.

Obama further authorized the use of offensive cyber attacks in foreign nations without their government’s consent whenever “US national interests and equities” require such nonconsensual attacks. It expressly reserves the right to use cyber tactics as part of what it calls “anticipatory action taken against imminent threats”.

The directive makes multiple references to the use of offensive cyber attacks by the US military.
Greenwald and others have long reported that the Obama administration claims the right to be judge, jury and executioner in both drone assassinations and offensive cyber attacks.
Greenwald also reports that the head of the cyber command is the NSA boss … the same guy responsible for much of the spying we’ve been hearing about:

In January, the Pentagon announced a major expansion of its Cyber Command Unit, under the command of General Keith Alexander, who is also the director of the NSA. That unit is responsible for executing both offensive and defensive cyber operations.
(There are other overlaps and interconnections between spying and warfare as well.)
The War Comes Home

Offensive cyber operations are not only occurring overseas …
The Department of Defense has long waged cyber-war against Americans by censoring and manipulating social media and other websites. More proof here and here.
This is not entirely surprising, given that:

• Programs which the government claims are aimed at foreign entities have long been used against American citizens living in the United States

• The “war on terror” has come home. If the government claims the power to assassinate and indefinitely detain American citizens living on U.S. soil … it’ s not going to hesitate in targeting them for propaganda and cyber-warfare

• The government has long sought to spread propaganda through mainstream media, video games, movies, television, and every other popular medium. Famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein says the CIA bought and paid for many successful journalists. See also this New York Times piece, this essay by the Independent, this speech by one of the premier writers on journalism, and this and this roundup. And the CIA is investing in technology which lets them cut out the middle man altogether … by having a computer write news stories

• On the other hand, real reporters who criticize those in power are being harassed, targeted and smeared

• Government agencies are scouring the Web for any critical comments about them, actively manipulating social media for propaganda purposes, and to help the too big to fail businesses compete against smaller businesses (and here), and to promote viewpoints which have nothing to do with keeping us safe

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed...one-everywhere

Breaking News from Newsmax.com

Patriot Act Author Sensenbrenner: Phone Records Grab ‘Un-American’ Guardian: UK Govt Getting US Spy Agency’s Data

NSA Mecca

Tens of thousands of Muslim pilgrims move around the Kaaba, the black cube seen at center, inside the Grand Mosque, during the annual Hajj in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The annual Islamic pilgrimage draws 3 million visitors each year, making it the largest yearly gathering of people in the world.

[photocredit]ASSOCIATED PRESS[/photocredit]