Documents leaked by Edward Snowden show that the U.S. government has widened the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance of Americans' international Internet traffic in the hunt for hackers.
The classified documents came from Snowden, the former NSA contractor who lives as a fugitive in Russia. In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos allowing the NSA to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and inside the United States, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad, according to the documents. It said the data included traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware.
Read moreThe CIA has been working with security researchers to hack into Apple’s technology since long before we all carried Apple devices around in our pockets.
The story lays out in detail how, for nearly a decade now, the CIA has been working on ways to penetrate Apple’s iPhones and iPads, in order to collect data on Apple customers, which Apple CEO Tim Cook has publicly and repeatedly vowed to protect. Researchers have been targeting Apple’s security keys, which encrypt user data, as well as working on their own version of Apple’s software development tool, which would give the intelligence community access to any apps.
Read moreThe governments of the USA, UK and Canada characterize hackers as a criminal menace, warn of the threats they allegedly pose to critical infrastructure, and aggressively prosecute them, but they are also secretly exploiting their information and expertise, according to top secret documents.
In some cases, the surveillance agencies are obtaining the content of emails by monitoring hackers as they breach email accounts, often without notifying the hacking victims of these breaches. These revelations about the intelligence agencies’ reliance on hackers are contained in documents provided by Edward Snowden.
Read moreBritish and Canadian spy agencies accumulated sensitive data on smartphone users, including location, app preferences, and unique device identifiers, by piggybacking on ubiquitous software from advertising and analytics companies, according to a document obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Programmers frequently embed code from a handful of such companies into their smartphone apps because it helps them answer a variety of questions: How often does a particular user open the app, and at what time of day? Where does the user live? Where does the user work? Where is the user right now? What’s the phone’s unique identifier?
Read moreOn human rights day Edward Snowden appeared by video link at an event organised by Amnesty International, le Monde, Mediaparte and Arte in Paris. The event, which was simultaneously translated, marks the first time Edward Snowden has spoken live to an audience in France.
Reacting to the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report into CIA torture programmes, Edward Snowden told his audience that the things that we did as a result of this programme are inexcusable crimes. And what we see is quite dangerous in the United States debate.
Read moreA secret message was delivered to the National Security Agency. An intelligence unit within the U.S. military’s Africa Command needed help to hack into Libya’s cellphone networks and monitor text messages. For the NSA, the task was easy.
The agency had already obtained technical information about the cellphone carriers’ internal systems by spying on documents sent among company employees, and these details would provide the perfect blueprint to help the military break into the networks. The NSA’s assistance in the Libya operation, however, was not an isolated case. It was part of a much larger surveillance program.
Read morePrivacy has never been “an absolute right”, according to the new director of GCHQ, who has used his first public intervention to accuse US technology companies of becoming “the command and control networks of choice” for terrorists.
He said a new generation of freely available technology has helped groups like Islamic State to hide from the security services and accuses major tech firms of being “in denial”, going further than his predecessor in seeking to claim that the leaks of Edward Snowden have aided terror networks. The new director says Isis differs from its predecessors in the security of its communications, presenting an even greater challenge to the security services.
Read moreNearly 7 million usernames and passwords from Dropbox, the free cloud service for storing your photos, videos, and documents across devices, were leaked onto the internet. And just days prior former NSA contractor recommended that users drop Dropbox if they wanted to protect their privacy.
Dropbox is standing firm on its position that its service is fully encrypted, and denies responsibility for the leak of emails and passwords, many of which have been expired for some time now. Dropbox instead shifts the blame to users and third parties stated that these usernames and passwords had been unfortunately stolen from other services and used in attempts to log in to Dropbox accounts.
Read moreThe National Security Agency has sent spies into private companies in a bid to compromise networks from within, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
Agents sent in by the NSA targeted global communications firms under a highly classified 'core secrets' program dubbed Sentry Eagle previously known only to a handful of officials. The documents indicate operatives in the core secrets program worked in concert with companies to weaken encryption and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to break security mechanisms. The document listed facts ranging from unclassified to top secret necessitating "extraordinary protection".
Read moreThe NSA has repeatedly assured the public that it definitely does not perform economic espionage. It may collect metadata and communications from around the world and intercept shipments of computer hardware in order to install its own spying devices, but it doesn't perform espionage in service of American corporate interests.
This was the small thing that set our intelligence agencies slightly above similar agencies in China. Last August, the ODNI (Jame Clapper's office) sent this categorical denial in response to leaked documents. “The department does not engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.” And then the truth came rolling in, thanks to Snowden's leaks.
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