Major telecom companies have been assisting the UK intelligence agency GCHQ by granting access to all the traffic passing through their fiber-optic cables – and by developing Trojan software, leaked papers obtained by German media reveal.
The classified slides obtained by German news agencies Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and NDR list global telecommunication operators among the collaborators of the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters. The documents are said to have been leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The 2009-dated GCHQ slides reportedly provide the names of the following companies.
Read moreThe US government has paid at least £100m to the UK spy agency GCHQ over the last three years to secure access to and influence over Britain's intelligence gathering programmes. The top secret payments are set out in documents which make clear that the Americans expect a return on the investment, and that GCHQ has to work hard to meet their demands.
"GCHQ must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight," a GCHQ strategy briefing said. The funding underlines the closeness of the relationship between GCHQ and its US equivalent, the National Security Agency.
Read moreThe bipartisan leaders of a powerful Senate committee questioned the truthfulness of the US intelligence community in a heated Wednesday morning hearing as officials conceded that their controversial bulk phone records collection of millions of Americans was not "the most important tool" – contradicting statements they previously gave to Congress.
Two senators said they now planned to introduce new legislation before the August recess that would significantly transform the transparency and oversight of the bulk surveillance program. The chairman of the committee has already advocated for ending the bulk phone records collection and plans his own legislative push to shut it down.
Read moreU.S. authorities are more likely to ask for personal information of a user's microblogging service Twitter. Over the past six months, the U.S. government sent 902 to the company requesting a statement. Twitter just received 1176 requests.
Thus, in the United States accounts for more than 70% of all claims, the report said. In second place at the request of information is Japan (87 requests), and the third - the United Kingdom (26 requests). A large number of requests from Turkey or Brazil have been reported to the company. In this case, Twitter is rarely receives requests to remove a certain message. In just six months, the company received 21 such a request, of which only two were initiated by the U.S. authorities.
Read moreA top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet.The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs.
Read moreThe U.S. intelligence community plans to declassify additional information about surveillance programs of the National Security Agency, possibly as soon as Tuesday, CNN has learned.
A senior U.S. official tells CNN the information includes "white papers" on surveillance programs but also previously undisclosed information about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The official declined to be identified because the information has not been made public yet and because of the sensitive nature of the information. He would not offer further details in advance of the declassification process, which could extend into later this week.
Read moreGlenn Greenwald, the Guardian columnist who has broken a series of stories about the National Security Agency's surveillance powers, said Sunday that even low-level NSA analysts have the ability to search through private communications.
Greenwald's comments defended bombshell revelations from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden at the time, which have since come under scrutiny by intelligence analysts. Greenwald is set to testify before Congress on Wednesday, along with other NSA surveillance critics and analysts. Greenwald dared NSA officials to dispute the claims when testifying this week.
Read moreSecret demands mark escalation in Internet surveillance by the federal government through gaining access to user passwords, which are typically stored in encrypted form.
The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users' stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed. If the government is able to determine a person's password, which is typically stored in encrypted form, the credential could be used to log in to an account to peruse confidential correspondence or even impersonate the user.
Read moreEdward Snowden was wanted after he had exposed the information about surveillance programs made by U.S. secretive agencies all over the world. His exposure opened the question about privacy. In U.S. where PRISM is used overall anonymity becomes a rarity. Someone accepted it, someone is angry, but everybody agrees that there is no easy way to avoid NSA curious eye.
“5 years ago, I would say that mobile phone is a small informer in your pocket and that you should get rid of it and should not carry. It doesn't matter now. There are automatic license plate readers which allow watching you.
Read moreDeutsche Telecom Company staff cooperates with American secret services for more than 10 years. According to Focus the representatives of the company provided information to FBI from 2000. There occurred a document in edition of Focus magazine that points the German company representatives cooperate with FBI very close from 2000.
This cooperation began when German company had bought American company Voice Stream Wireless (now known as T-Mobile). After purchasing American company Germans had to sign a special agreement with American secret services that requires the disclosure of information.
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