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Last edited Sun Mar 23, 2014, 03:17 PM - Edit history (1)
How the NSA Targets Those with 'Keys to Digital Kingdoms'
Though accused of no wrongdoing whatsoever, spy agency targets personal computers of individuals whose job it is to protect online networks
- Jon Queally, staff writer
The latest reporting from The Intercept reveals how individuals across the world who work as 'system administrators' for computer and online networks had their personal computers and digital information targeted by National Security Agency hacking units as a way for the agency to gain access to the systems they controlled.
Though those targeted were not suspected of any wrong doing whatsoever, internal NSA documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show that these people, called "sys admins" for short, had their email and Facebook accounts tracked as the government hackers tried to access their "network maps, customer lists, [and] business correspondence."
The overall effort by the NSA relates to previously reported programs based on Snowden documents that show efforts by the US surveillance agency and their British counterparts at the GCHQ to gain direct access to "foreign network routers" and other digital systems without the companies or governments who control those networks knowing. Who better to target than the person that already has the keys to the kingdom? asks one NSA-employed hacker in a post cited by The Intercept.
Strikingly, according to the reporting by journalists Ryan Gallagher and Peter Maass, these internal NSA "posts" were written by an individual NSA employee thought to be a contract "network specialist" with a highly "boastful and casual tone," describing how bits of personal datalike "pictures of cats in funny poses with amusing captions"could also be harvested alongside information related to the professional work of the targeted sys admin. The posts are full of "hacker jargon (pwn, skillz, zomg, internetz)" and "punctuated with expressions of mischief" such as Current mood: devious. Another reads: Current mood: scheming.
Gallagher and Maass report:
Here's how it works:
What wed really like is a personal webmail or Facebook account to target, one of the posts explains, presumably because, whereas IP addresses can be shared by multiple people, alternative selectors like a webmail or Facebook account can be linked to a particular target. You can dumpster-dive for alternate selectors in the big SIGINT trash can the author suggests. Or pull out your wicked Google-fu (slang for efficient Googling) to search for any official and non-official e-mails that the targets may have posted online.
Once the agency believes it has identified a sys admins personal accounts, according to the posts, it can target them with its so-called QUANTUM hacking techniques. The Snowden files reveal that the QUANTUM methods have been used to secretly inject surveillance malware into a Facebook page by sending malicious NSA data packets that appear to originate from a genuine Facebook server. This method tricks a targets computer into accepting the malicious packets, allowing the NSA to infect the targeted computer with a malware implant and gain unfettered access to the data stored on its hard drive.
Just pull those selectors, queue them up for QUANTUM, and proceed with the pwnage, the author of the posts writes. (Pwnage, short for pure ownage, is gamer-speak for defeating opponents.) The author adds, triumphantly, Yay! /throws confetti in the air.
In a final detail worth noting, The Intercept describe how the NSA posts contained in the slides reveal the internal debate at the agency over the sheer volume of data being collected by their various surveillance techniques. Whereas some agents criticized the poor infrastructure and its inability to handle so much data from around the globe, other employees celebrated what has become known as the NSA's "collect it all approach" to the world of online surveillance.
Our ability to pull bits out of random places of the Internet, bring them back to the mother-base to evaluate and build intelligence off of is just plain awesome! the author writes. One of the coolest things about it is how much data we have at our fingertips.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/03/21-0
Aerows
(39,961 posts)If there is an argument as to why this is legal, I'd like to hear it.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)People need to go to prison for this.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)That they believe everyone is a target, and that privacy and security doesn't matter one bit to them. It's systemic, obviously. When you look at the whole picture, it's clear that there is absolutely no limits to what they will do "just because they can".
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)And it is carried well beyond the NSA. This government is out of control, and engaging in routine criminal behavior.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023463936
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023434961
...review of quiet admissions and unauthorized leaks revealed that the NSA branch of the U.S. military had not only been collecting and warehousing nearly every form of electronic communications by innocent everyday people, without warrants, but had been sharing the proceeds of their unconstitutional spying with
the Drug Enforcement Agency;
local police;
the Secret Service;
the Department of Justice;
the Pentagon;
and the Department of Homeland Security
for regular, non-terrorism-related government purposes.
Well, now you can add another agency to the list. Reuters reports that the Internal Revenue Service thats right, the IRS has been getting tips for tax investigations by dipping into the database of warrantless intelligence surveillance.
They say all this constitution-squashing is about catching the terrorists, but lets be real the danger of an American dying in a terrorist attack is smaller than the danger she or he will die of a hernia. The slowly-emerging secret is that U.S. government agents are using the excuse of terrorism to pry into your life for reasons that are both mundane and none of their business."
http://irregulartimes.com/
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)if they can't steal what they want from you, they get something against you instead
Aerows
(39,961 posts)to pursue charges against people for things that have absolutely nothing to do with "national security" or "terrorism" and increase their closure rate. That makes them look good, and it fills the jail cells with people that aren't violent criminals or might actually be innocent - which is what the for-profit prison industry loves.
Due process, shmoo process. Who cares if somebody's rights get violated, they were probably guilty of something! And hey, it made me and my agency/department/organization look good!
KoKo
(84,711 posts)NSA spying revelations first broke. But, we were told it was "nothing to see there...move along" with some stuff about Snowden being a Chinese Spy then a Russian Spy and that it was due to reporter Glenn Greenwald who was a secret libertarian and attention seeker.
But, those of us who remembered J. Edgar Hoover's reign at FBI where he spied on Senators/House members and those protesting the Vietnam War and anyone on his "personal list" and used information to further his influence saw that this was an important revelation. They gather the information because they CAN.. The laws couldn't keep up with growth of the internet and so many of us depend on it now socially, personally for banking, medical forms, job applications...and the rest that we are caught up in the dragnet without proper protection.
The danger is the thousands of Private Contractors who have access to all this data/information can't be expected not to be using the info...selling it to those who can use it...like Multi-National Corporations, Political Operatives of both parties and those who in the Dark Shadows/Criminal Elements who can use the information for their own private gain.
We have to hope that as more and more comes out that some action will be taken to put proper legal restrictions in place and the data collected without law will be destroyed. Not hopeful that will really happen though...
jsr
(7,712 posts)Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)I never thought of Skinner or Earl or fellow DU'ers as suspected terrorists before.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)And it extends well beyond the NSA. Did you see the article Ichingcarpenter posted yesterday?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024703330
See also post 13.
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)The U.S. Department of Justice has begun reviewing a controversial unit inside the Drug Enforcement Administration that uses secret domestic surveillance tactics including intelligence gathered by the National Security Agency to target Americans for drug offenses. According to a series of articles published by Reuters, agents are instructed to recreate the investigative trail in order to conceal the origins of the evidence, not only from defense lawyers, but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges. "We are talking about ordinary crime: drug dealing, organized crime, money laundering. We are not talking about national security crimes," says Reuters reporter John Shiffman. Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, says this is just the latest scandal at the DEA. "I hope it is a sort of wake-up call for people in Congress to say now is the time, finally, after 40 years, to say this agency really needs a close examination."
Democracy Now
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Behavior that defines a criminal police state.
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)KoKo
(84,711 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)Which implies, though is by no means conclusive, that the targeting involves foreign individuals.
Yet so many here fall for the same ploy without ever asking that one basic question: is the NSA targeting American citizens? The answer so far throughout this entire Snowden charade is no. Unless you count metadata as 'targeting'.
But this article? It's evidence of nothing unless that basic question is asked.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]
Rumold
(69 posts)According to this former FBI agent and well respected expert, every single conversation made by an American via wired or wireless phone signals is being recorded - See more at :
http://www.dailytech.com/Former+FBI+Agent+All+Your+Communications+are+Recorded+Government+Accessible/article31486.htm#sthash.mxY9zqJZ.dpuf
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Chilling. Enraging. Criminal.
Aerows
(39,961 posts)plainly stating that all of this information in available to them, and we STILL have people in this thread saying "there is no evidence!!!"
If there isn't enough evidence for those folks at this point, there will never be enough evidence, and even if people get hauled to jail over these revelations (which they should) they will probably say "but there really isn't that much evidence."
This is in no way case of a few bad actors. It's systemic and the entire culture of all of these alphabet soup agencies. Here's why - the more cases a DEA agent, IRS agent or FBI agent (not to mention all the rest of the law enforcement agencies at every level from local all the way to federal), the more cases they close, the more it reflects positively on their careers. Closing cases results in promotions, it results in raises, and it results in status for both the agency and the agent.
Why WOULDN'T they use this information if it is there? Oh, sure, we all know it is not Constitutional, but if you can construct a case with all of this stuff being handy and hide where you got it from, why wouldn't you? 95% of people would definitely bend the rules if it benefited them to do so. These guys benefit enormously from closing cases.
Once you realize "who benefits" you start to realize it's cultural in those organizations.
randome
(34,845 posts)I don't see that the FBI has anything approaching the technology level of the NSA, and the NSA is strictly forbidden from spying on Americans.
Let's see some proof that these regulations are not being adhered to and I'll be properly outraged.
(Gotta run. Trip to the bookstore with the daughters. Not that anyone is hanging on my every word or anything.)
[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]
Aerows
(39,961 posts)that reviewed several cases stating that it was not Constitutional over a random poster on the internet that habitually defends spying.
But please continue with the "nothing to see here" defense. It's to the point where it is rather charming.
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)Egnever
(21,506 posts)The person states all of this is about gathering info on targets they are assigned. In fact he complains that they aren't allowed to collect all data.
It is an interesting document though worth reading.
This doesn't need to fade from view.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)KoKo
(84,711 posts)So many tech folks here on DU that might want to know about this.
This needs to stay up at the top for visibility.
Autumn
(44,972 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)It is a sickness that has infected our government and its employees. It's no wonder Snowden did what he did.