The Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled that regulations covering access by Britain’s GCHQ to emails and phone records intercepted by the US National Security Agency breached human rights law.
Advocacy groups said the decision raised questions about the legality of intelligence-sharing operations between the UK and the USA. The ruling appears to suggest that aspects of the operations were illegal for at least seven years – between 2007, when the PRISM intercept programme was introduced, and 2014. The critical judgment marks the first time since the IPT was established that it has upheld a complaint relating to any of the UK’s intelligence agencies.
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 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 moreThe secretive British spy agency GCHQ has developed covert tools to seed the internet with false information, including the ability to manipulate the results of online polls, artificially inflate pageview counts on web sites, “amplif[y]” sanctioned messages on YouTube, and censor video content judged to be “extremist.”
The capabilities, detailed in documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even include an old standby for pre-adolescent prank callers everywhere: A way to connect two unsuspecting phone users together in a call. The tools were created by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), and constitute some of the most startling methods of propaganda and internet deception contained within the Snowden archive.
Read moreWorld media is getting rich on spy sensations - Edward Snowden keeps on leaking classified files. The former U.S. intelligence officer informed Der Spiegel and The Intercept about NSA’s surveillance program that targeted political leaders of the world.
The program codenamed Nymrod was developed to intercept various telecommunications channels, with a main focus on internet and voice services. The information was collected automatically and added into the "Target Knowledge Database". According to the documents, there were about 300 reports listed in a secret dossier on the German Chancellor Angela Merkel alone.
Read moreThe revelations of Edward Snowden keep on coming. The Guardian reports on a hacking program of the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) codenamed Optic Nerve. The program intercepted Yahoo webcam chats collecting and storing images of millions of users, even when individual users were not suspected of wrongdoing.
The leaked documents revealed that GCHQ secret files date from 2008 till 2010 and in the first 6 months Optic Nerve collected the still images from 1.8 million users globally. One of the files estimated till 11% of the content categorised as "undesirable nudity”.
Read moreThe British spy agency GCHQ used hacking techniques, including distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, against the hacking collective Anonymous, according to new documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
Anonymous hackers were attacking websites with their own DDoS attacks in 2011 while authorities in the UK and the U.S. were scrambling for a response — it turns out GCHQ's answer was to turn the hackers' weapons against them. The new documents reveal that a GCHQ unit dubbed the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, or JTRIG, launched an operation called Rolling Thunder against the hacker collective in 2011.
Read moreTop Israeli politicians want the US to stop "systematically spying" on Israel after revelations that the NSA intercepted emails of former top brass. Much to everybody's surprise, the Prime Minister’s Office has chosen to stifle the scandal, however.
"The secret is out," Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz said on Sunday. "The US is systematically spying on the defense and diplomatic leadership here in Israel. Is this how friends treat each other?" Housing Minister Uri Ariel said on Israel Radio he expected the US to admit wrongdoing.
Read moreBritain’s secret listening service, GCHQ, uses a spying system codenamed “Royal Concierge” to carry out detailed surveillance on foreign diplomats and government delegations at more than 350 hotels across the world, Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine reported on Sunday.
The disclosures, based on intelligence data leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, follow reports that British intelligence installs secret software to spy on selected companies and revelations earlier this month by The Independent that GCHQ operates a listening post on the roof of the UK’s Berlin embassy.
Read moreIn an open letter published on November 3 by the German news magazine Der Spiegel, whistleblower Edward Snowden accused the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart (GCHQ) of being among the “worst offenders” engaged in uncontrolled mass surveillance.
In his letter, entitled “A Manifesto for the Truth,” Snowden wrote: “The world has learned a lot in a short amount of time about irresponsibly operated security agencies and, at times, criminal surveillance programs. Sometimes the agencies try to avoid controls.”
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